“I feel almost completely cured” — Long Covid and brain fog

Testimonial received by email and published with the kind permission of its author. A first-hand account, it engages its signatory and complements, in a subjective register, the factual presentations of the site’s other sections.

I should like to share a positive experience of treatment for “brain fog” through the audio-psycho-phonology method. It was rather by chance that this treatment was recommended to me, and I hope the information can be shared more widely, so that other patients may benefit from it.

After barely four sessions, I felt a marked improvement, whereas I had been suffering from long Covid for a year. The improvements are both cognitive and physical, so much so that I feel almost completely cured. I was followed by my general practitioner and by the long-Covid department of the HUG (Geneva University Hospitals), and I am a member of the Altea forum; yet I was never advised on how to improve my cognitive difficulties. I was even refused follow-up by a neurologist.

I hope you will be able to share this testimonial and make this treatment more widely known, in particular through the Altea forum in Switzerland.

Marylaure Bloch

What the science says

This testimonial is sincere, but it does not allow us to conclude that audio-psycho-phonology treats long Covid or “brain fog”. Three reasons call for caution.

First, the cognitive disturbances of long Covid frequently improve over time, spontaneously, over weeks or months; in people who were not hospitalised, the majority of symptoms — including brain fog — are no longer significant at two years. An improvement occurring after a few sessions therefore cannot be attributed to the treatment: without a comparison group, one cannot distinguish the effect of a treatment from natural progression, from expectation (placebo) effects, or from the other forms of care being pursued in parallel.

Next, no clinical study shows an effect of the Tomatis method on long Covid or brain fog; more broadly, the effectiveness of auditory training on cognitive functions is not established by controlled trials.

Finally, a word about one sentence in the account. The author reports not having been referred for her cognitive difficulties, and even having been “refused” neurological follow-up. This experience is real and painful for her; it should not, however, be read as an indictment of medicine in favour of the treatment. The care of long Covid is a matter for medical follow-up, and no testimonial can take its place.

Sources

• Neurocognitive trajectories in long COVID: Evidence from longitudinal analyses — gradual cognitive improvement after infection.
• A Narrative Review of the Efficacy of Long COVID Interventions on Brain Fog… — the state of the evidence, limited, on brain-fog interventions.
• Auditory integration training and other sound therapies (Cochrane, Sinha et al.) — insufficient evidence of effectiveness of auditory training.